For this feeling of wonder shows that you are a philosopher,
since wonder is the only beginning of philosophy.

Monday, 20 February 2012

Of Truth

WHAT is
truth? said jesting Pilate,and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there
be, that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief;
affecting free-will in thinking, as well as in acting. And though the sects of
philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits,
which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them, as was
in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labor, which
men take in finding out of truth, nor again, that when it is found, it imposeth
upon men’s thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a natural, though
corrupt love, of the lie itself. One of the later school of the Grecians,
examineth the matter, and is at a stand, to think what should be in it, that
men should love lies; where neither they make for pleasure, as with poets, nor
for advantage, as with the merchant; but for the lie’s sake. But I cannot tell;
this same truth, is a naked, and open day-light, that doth not show the masks,
and mummeries, and triumphs, of the world, half so stately and daintily as
candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth
best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond, or carbuncle, that
showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth
any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men’s minds, vain opinions,
flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like,
but it would leave the minds, of a number of men, poor shrunken things, full of
melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?

One of
the fathers, in great severity, called poesy vinum daemonum, because it fireth
the imagination; and yet, it is but with the shadow of a lie. But it is not the
lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in, and settleth in
it, that doth the hurt; such as we spake of before. But howsoever these things
are thus in men’s depraved judgments, and affections, yet truth, which only
doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is the
love-making, or wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of
it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good
of human nature. The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the
light of the sense; the last, was the light of reason; and his sabbath work
ever since, is the illumination of his Spirit. First he breathed light, upon
the face of the matter or chaos; then he breathed light, into the face of man;
and still he breatheth and inspireth light, into the face of his chosen. The
poet, that beautified the sect, that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith
yet excellently well: It is a pleasure, to stand upon the shore, and to see
ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure, to stand in the window of a castle, and
to see a battle, and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is
comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth (a hill not to be
commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see the
errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below; so always
that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling, or pride. Certainly, it
is heaven upon earth, to have a man’s mind move in charity, rest in providence,
and turn upon the poles of truth.

To pass
from theological, and philosophical truth, to the truth of civil business; it
will be acknowledged, even by those that practise it not, that clear, and round
dealing, is the honor of man’s nature; and that mixture of falsehoods, is like
alloy in coin of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but
it embaseth it. For these winding, and crooked courses, are the goings of the
serpent; which goeth basely upon the belly, and not upon the feet. There is no
vice, that doth so cover a man with shame, as to be found false and perfidious.
And therefore Montaigne saith prettily, when he inquired the reason, why the
word of the lie should be such a disgrace, and such an odious charge? Saith he,
If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he
is brave towards God, and a coward towards men. For a lie faces God, and
shrinks from man. Surely the wickedness of falsehood, and breach of faith,
cannot possibly be so highly expressed, as in that it shall be the last peal,
to call the judgments of God upon the generations of men; it being foretold,
that when Christ cometh, he shall not find faith upon the earth.